Kyle Whittingham, the 2008 National Coach of the Year, has participated in more Utah victories than any football coach in school history. As an assistant and head coach, Whittingham has participated in 170 victories in his 20 years at Utah. Eighty-five of those (85-43) have come in 10 years as the head coach.

Whittingham has been almost unbeatable in bowl games and is tied with John Robinson (USC/UNLV) for the best bowl winning percentage of any coach in NCAA history with a .889 mark. The two have identical 8-1 bowl records and the NCAA minimum is seven wins.

Whittingham is the only person who was involved in all of Utah's nine-consecutive bowl wins from 1999-2009, which tied the second-longest bowl win streak in NCAA history. He was the head coach for six of those wins and the defensive coordinator for the first three.

He came to Utah in 1994 as the defensive line coach and was promoted to defensive coordinator the next year. On December 8, 2004, Whittingham was named the school's 20th head coach. His first victory came three weeks later when he co-coached (with Urban Meyer) the 2005 Fiesta Bowl win over Pittsburgh. His first regular-season victory was against Arizona in the 2005 season opener.

In 2008, Whittingham engineered the best season in Utah football history when the Utes finished 13-0 and routed Alabama--a team that had spent five weeks at No. 1--in the Sugar Bowl. Utah finished the season with a No. 2 AP ranking and Whittingham was recognized as the National Coach of the Year by the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) and the Paul "Bear" Bryant Awards committee.

The country's only undefeated FBS team in 2008, Utah beat four top-25 teams--two that finished in the top 10. In addition to his national awards, Whittingham was named the Mountain West Conference Coach of the Year.

He has had four teams finish in the top 25 in his head coaching tenure: No. 2 in 2008 (AP), No. 18 in 2009 (AP), No. 23 in 2010 (Coaches) and No. 21 in 2014 (AP). Utah appeared in every College Football Playoff ranking in the CFP's inaugural season in 2014 with a final rank of No. 22.

Last season, while leading Utah to its best overall (9-4) and conference (5-4) record since joining the Pac-12 in 2011, Whittingham was named to the watch list for the 2014 Dodd Trophy and was a semifinalist for the Maxwell Football Club Collegiate Coach of the Year Award.

The 2014 Utes beat two top 25 teams and boasted wins over historical football powers Michigan, UCLA, USC and Stanford, which is considered unprecedented in Utah's history. Utah concluded its 2014 season with a 45-10 pasting of Colorado State in the Las Vegas Bowl.

In their first season in the Pac-12 Conference in 2011, the Utes were in contention for a berth in the league championship game until the final week of the regular season. They bounced back to beat Georgia Tech in the Sun Bowl and finish with an 8-5 record. The 2012 Utes won three of their final five Pac-12 games and the 2013 season included an upset of No. 5 Stanford.

Hackett became the first Ray Guy Award winner in school history in 2014 and Orchard received the Ted Hendricks Award as the nation's top defensive end.

Whittingham's players have won 63 first-team all-conference awards, including 11 in Utah's first four seasons of Pac-12 play. Among them were two-time first-team honorees Hackett and Star Lotulelei (2011-12). Utah has also captured two of the four Morris Awards since 2011 for the Pac-12's best defensive lineman: Lotulelei won the 2011 Morris Award before becoming a first-round NFL Draft pick and Nate Orchard was the 2014 Morris Award winner.

Before joining the Pac-12, Whittingham coached a Mountain West Conference MVP every year from 2004-08: Defensive Players of the Year Scalley (2004) and Weddle (2005 and 2006), Special Teams MVP Sakoda (2006, 2007, 2008), and Offensive MVP Brian Johnson (2008).

Utah has also excelled academically under Whittingham. Since he became head coach in 2005, his players have earned three Academic All-America citations and 186 academic all-conference awards.

Whittingham has sent a steady stream of players into the NFL and there are 28 former Utes on current NFL rosters. As an assistant or head coach, he has had 64 players make NFL teams, including 35 draft picks (10 first or second-round selections) and 29 undrafted free agents. A school-record six Utes were drafted in 2010, which was tied for fourth in the nation that year.

Whittingham began his coaching career in 1985-86 as a graduate assistant at his alma mater, Brigham Young. He spent one season as the defensive coordinator at the College of Eastern Utah in 1987, before a six-year stint at Idaho State (1988-93).

A linebacker for Brigham Young from 1978-81, Whittingham earned first-team all-WAC and WAC Defensive Player of the Year honors in 1981. He played in the first four Holiday Bowls and was named Defensive MVP of the 1981 game. In 2008, he was inducted into the Holiday Bowl Hall of Fame. After his senior season, Whittingham played in the Hula and Japan Bowls. He played professionally with the Denver Broncos (1982 training camp) and the U.S. Football League's (USFL) Denver Gold (1983) and New Orleans Breakers (1984). He played on the Los Angeles Rams' replacement squad in 1987.

Whittingham graduated from BYU in 1984 and added a master's degree from the school in 1987. Born Nov. 21, 1959, he was raised in Provo, Utah. He is married to the former Jamie Daniels. They have four children: Tyler, Melissa, Alex and Kylie. Tyler played for the Utes from 2009-11 and Alex is a sophomore linebacker.